Greetings,

It seems to me that the real issue behind our current rules discussion is how do we grow the class, encourage creative thinking, and still keep someone with deep pockets from outspending the rest of us? Let me share a few thoughts even if they are as we say stateside “a bit out of the box.”

First, how do we grow the class? While on a recent garage cleaning expedition I came across an old issue of Multihulls Magazine that included a list of cats under 20 feet. In that list there were almost 50 CLASSES of catamarans over 4.7 meters and under 5.1 meters with at least 13.9 sq. meters of sail.

In theory, many of these boats are candidates to race as F16's. By the way, that list did NOT include Taipans, Spitfires, Stealths, or even Mosquitos. Short of finding several thousand new comers to run out and buy Blades, it might be worth our while to identify as many of the owners of those boats as possible, make them aware of the class, and encourage them to get involved.

But that still leaves us with the question: how do we encourage growth and development and still keep the costs for boats at a reasonable level?

As someone once said, “There’s no point in reinventing the wheel.” And here we might be wise to take a lesson from our friends who govern car racing.

If there’s one lesson to be learned from the car racers it’s this: high tech or low weight do not necessarily produce spending wars. But combining high tech with low weight almost always does! (Formula 1 comes to mind here.) And as Wouter said recently, some people will always cheat. The trick is to keep the “cheaters” and/or big spenders from dominating the racing by balancing out high tech and low weight.

In the case of the F16 class, the solution already exists. The class already has “optimized” and “non-optimized” F16’s. How about changing the name and refer to those class distinctions as homolagated and prototype.

The homolagated boats: These would be those “classes” of boats like the Taipan, Stealth, Blade, etc. that have been built to conform to the F16 class rules. The only rule we’d place on those boats is that homolagated boats must be structurally the same as the other boats in the class. (ie. if a Mosquito shows up with glued in carbon fiber beams and the rest of the fleet has alloy beams, the new Mosquito would by rule have to race as a prototype!)

This would open the door to homolagating other boats if and when they had reach a certain size. Let’s say 5 people convert Cobras to race as F16’s. We could at that point homolagate the Cobra as a class. And again, the homolagated boat sailors would just “run what they brung” as long as they conformed to the rest of the boats in their fleet.

The prototype boats: The prototypes would be ANY boat that has not been homolagated. In the prototype class, I’d suggest we RELAX the rules to encourage development and encourage participation. The prototype class could probably function with length, fixed beam width, and TOTAL sail area.

And give the local class administrators some leeway. That way if someone shows up with one of the older boats that has hiking racks but OTHERWISE fits under the F16 rules, the class could still allow them to race their boat as a prototype.

BUT (and here’s the key) while relaxing the rules on technology in the prototype class, we would also raise minimum weight for boats that exceed the class rules for homolagated boats.
For example if someone wants to build a wing mast section for a prototype F16, let him or her do it. ONLY raise the minimum weight for boats with wing masts. The following table comes to mind:
1. With 30% wing: minimum boat weight is raised by 45 kilograms PLUS the weight of the mast.
2. With over 30% wing: minimum boat weight is raised by 90 kilograms PLUS the weight of the mast.

AND follow the lead of the car racing groups and give the local F16 committee the power to slap a weight penalty on ANY prototype the “appears” to be capable of sailing beyond the class Texcel rating. And I’m all for making this a bit vague because doing so would help to discourage cheating.

If we set those weight penalties in 45 kilogram steps they would be relatively easy to enforce. (I’d think almost any two of us even after a couple of pints could tell the difference between a 103 kilogram boat and a 150 kilogram boat just by trying to lift the bloody thing off the beach!) And give the local committee the power to slap as many penalties on any given prototype boat as they feel necessary to maintain competitive balance.

That way if someone with an unlimited budget shows up with a real “cheater” and does a horizon job on the rest of the fleet they get slapped with a weight penalty. Simple! Easy to enforce! Effective!

And as a class we don't have to ban materials or construction methods and still keep the door open to innovation, creative energy, and all kinds of designs.

John Metzig